Tinfoil Chef

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I have, over the years, had a lot of great sandwiches from Subway. Generally speaking their stuff is pretty good (even if a bit pricey) and it’s been consistent for years. Then in recent months we’ve had occasion to revisit a local Subway after a pretty long dry spell in between and There’s something that my wife noticed right away that I still can’t figure out.

They now make their sandwiches upside-down.

That’s right. The sandwiches are still great, made to order and so on. They’re just upside down. The meat items are now placed on the “top” half of the bread and the “toppings” are now placed on the bottom. We asked the person making the sandwich why they were doing it that way and they could only shrug and say that was the way they were told to make them. Which is what bugs me.

You see, Subway has always made a big deal about how their people have to be trained in detail how to make the sandwiches. In fact, the sandwich makers are called “Sandwich Artists”. Given their specialty, I’d think that Subway would get the construction order right. I mean, they’re called “Toppings” for a reason, they go on top.

I realize that a lot of people will say that it doesn’t really matter, so long as all the right stuff is on the thing and to a point they’re right. However, when I get out a sandwich and unwrap it, I expect the “Toppings” to be on the “Top” of the sandwich. When it’s not built right, there is a much higher chance of the meats, toppings, or condiments managing to escape the confines of the bread, making a mess.

So I’ll ask that any Subway employees who read this please pass this on to the higher ups. Sandwiches are supposed to be built a certain way. If they’re not, they cease to be sandwiches and turn into messes waiting to happen.

Technorati Tags: sandwich making, messes, subway, sandwiches, sandwich mess

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We’ve been spending a lot of time away from home this month and one of the things that I aways end up missing is the coffee I have at home. Oh, it’s nothing super special, In fact it’s an off-brand of coffee that I chose because it was the lowest price. But after all the time we’ve spent in hospitals or eating away from home and some of the truly vile concoctions that come out of coffee dispensers in these places I have never been so glad to come home and brew up a pot of my familiar el cheapo coffee and fix it the way I’ve been doing for years.

Sitting here enjoying the last of that first pot of home-brewed coffee in a couple of days I decided that it would be only appropriate to dig into the collection of coffee recipes and put one of them up tonight.

This one is called “Alpine Carnival”

You start by dividing two tablespoons of instant coffee and 1 teaspoon of vanilla evenly between two cups.

Then in a small saucepan, dissolve two tablespoons of brown sugar in a teaspoon of water. Stir the dissolved sugar over a medium heat until it reaches a full boil.

Once it comes to a boil immediately remove it from the heat and stir in 1 and a half cups of boiling water. Divide sugar mixture between the two cups and top with a dollop of whipped cream.

Technorati Tags: good coffee, recipe, cheap coffee, coffee at home, coffee, bad coffee

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Anyone that knows me can assure you that I’ve never been a fan of camping. It’s not that I’m some sort of weenie that’s afraid of the great outdoors or anything like that. In fact I’ve slept on the ground in my days and I wouldn’t recommend it as a recreational event. I consider things like that to be better left for times when they’re necessary. If that means I’m reliant on modern conveniences like kitchen faucets with running water, indoor toilet facilities, central heating and air conditioning then you better believe it.

That said, this recipe will work just as good on a backyard barbecue as it will over a campfire in the middle of Jurrasic park.

For this recipe you need to leave the skin on the banana. Slice it lengthwise but not all the way through. Put some marsmallows and chocolate chips in the slit. Sprinkle brown sugar lightly on top.

Wrap this tightly in foil, making sure to seal the ends. Place on grill over campfire or coals, seam side up. The boat will be ready to sail in about 7 minutes.

Technorati Tags: banana, banana+boat, camping, dessert, treat, grill, recipe, barbecue+grill

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They’ve gone and done it again. Specifically I’m talking about the news I saw this morning about the latest health risks associated with fast food. Now, in addition to being the cause of a lot of unnecessary weight gain and heart problems, they’re talking about increased chances of several kinds of cancer if you eat fast food more often than once a week or so.

I guess it’s just too bad for all of the what? Millions? of people that live day to day grabbing burgers for lunch because they’re either just handy, they like ‘em, or they haven’t time (or money!) for anything else. I guess I’m a tad bitter about it because I’m a burger lover from way back and now I have to think twice about it anytime I decide I’d just love a double cheeseburger (<rant>which by the way, our local McDonald’s *STILL* doesn’t have on the dollar menu like every other one in the known universe!</rant>)

I can’t help wondering how the fast food industry is going to respond to this news that is a direct hit on some of their main staple sales items. Seems to me that the various McExecutives are going to have to put down their fancy Mizuno golf gear and sit down for some serious brainstorming and soon. This trend is not something that’s going to go away anytime soon and that is sooner or later going to put a serious cramp in their lifestyles if they don’t come up with an alternative way of doing things that doesn’t get labeled as one or another kind of health risk.

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My wife and I both love the breakfast burritos that you can get at places like McDonalds & such but we don’t often want to go out early enough to get them before 10:30am when they stop serving breakfast menu items.

Today was one of those days that we wanted something like that. It’d been quite a while since the last time and the idea just sounded so good. We still however didn’t want to traipse all the way to the nearest Mikey-D’s to get ‘em. My wife pointed out, sorta Off The Cuff, that there was no reason we couldn’t make our own.

I browned up some sausage and while that was going I started another pan heating up with a drizzle of olive oil and a couple pats of butter. While that heated up and melted the butter I diced an onion (fortunately we had some sweet onions, that was a perfect touch) and chopped up a few medium black olives.

When the butter was melted I put the onions and black olives in. While that started to cook I picked out a decent sized mushrooms for everyone eating and diced it and set it aside for the time being in a bowl.

I took a minute to make sure the sausage was thoroughly broken up so that it would turn out as crumbles, gave the onions a stir as they cooked over a medium-high heat and for each person eating, cracked an egg into a microwave safe bowl and added a dash of milk and sprinkled a bit of shredded cheese in it.

Once the sausage was done it needed to be drained and a couple of tablespoons go into each egg bowl. When the onions are cooked enough to be soft and starting to caramelize, it’s time to add the mushrooms and stir that together as it cooks for another minute or so.

Some of the onion, black olive and mushroom mixture goes into each egg bowl. Stir this up with a fork to scramble the eggs and it’s into the microwave. I let it go just over a minute and a half, took it out and sirred it up again and then let it go another minute.

To get the tortillas ready, spread them with just a bit of butter and then lay them flat on a plate and give them 20 to 30 seconds in the microwave. This will soften them up so that you can fold them without breaking.

For each person, take two tortillas and lay them flat. Sprinkle a bit of shredded cheese on them and then put a few spinach leaves on top of that. Put about half of the mixture from one of the egg bowls in each burrito. Fold one end up and roll the tortilla into the shape of a burrito. Ideally you should fold both ends up but I’ve found that isn’t nearly as easy as it looks unless you’re using an eight inch or larger tortilla and the open end really isn’t a problem.

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The reason I use the microwave oven is not just because it’s fast, although that’s a good one. It’s also because when cooking in the microwave there is a lot less grease involved. You also don’t have to use cooking sprays and such. These things together not only result in the food tasting better, but they turn out healthier as well by having a lower grease content and not having the chemicals in the cooking spray involved.

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Ever thought of moving someplace just because of the restaurants? Honestly, I haven’t either but I have to say that after spending some time looking around some websites talking about restaurants and dining opportunities it’s easily enough to make a person at least think about doing a quick search of Branson homes for sale.

There’s more than a few places that I think anybody interested in good food would like to try just based on the little bit about them on a web site. Granted, the site was about tourism and is going to do the best it can to make Branson and everything about the place seem like the next best thing to Heaven itself. But still, places like “Plantation” with it’s buffets or authentic traditional Italian recipes served at “Tony Z’S Italian Ristorante & Lounge” all sound taste tempting.

Honestly, I think someday it would be fun to travel the country trying (and writing about) all the best (and sometimes out of the way or even flat out unknown) places to eat. There’s enough possibilities there to keep a person busy for as long as they enjoyed good food.

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For me, living in a rural area, “Sliders” is a flashback to something I haven’t seen in quite a while. No, I’m not talking about the TV series by that name. “Sliders” is a slang term for the singularly unique hamburgers I discovered at a White Castle restaurant back around 1979.

Exactly where the term originated I never did know, perhaps sometime I’ll see if I can find it just for curiosity’s sake.

These burgers were unlike any that I’ve seen before or since, although I’ve been told that another restaurant… “Krystals” is known for a burger that’s similar to the White Castle Slider.

They’re approximately two inches square, a shade less than a quarter inch thick and have a cluster of five holes in the meat. They’re cooked on a hot grill that’s been covered with a mixture of one part dried minced onions in two parts water.

The meat is laid down on the onions, then the bottom part of the bun is put on top of the meat and the top of the bun sits on top of that.

If you’re thinking that this makes turning them difficult, that’s the reason for the holes, they allow steam from the onion and water mixture to pass through and cook both sides at once. It also means that a White Castle burger never has a dried out bun.

They cook like that for just two or three minutes and they’re ready to go. The cook then picks up the top bun, flips the burger and bottom bun over, drops on a slice of cheese (this part is optional depending on whether you’re ordering White Castles with cheese or not), Add a dill pickle chip, put the top half of the bun on and it’s popped into a pasteboard box.

They were bagged up, the boxes made it easy to pack ten of them in a single bag, by facing the open side of the boxes together.

There was a time when I’d pick up a sack of sliders (or two…sometimes three.. what can I say? I love those things), a two liter bottle of Coke and spend the night watching Tv while munching sliders.

Unfortunately those days are gone for the foreseeable future because actual White Castle restaurants can only be found in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. It’s true that frozen White Castles can be found in supermarkets in most major cities, but frankly I’ve tried them on a number of occasions and really, they’re just not the same.

Somehow I don’t expect they’re going to build a restaurant somewhere in northeast Arkansas any time in the next hundred years,

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Honestly, I’ve never actually been into things like “tailgating”, A.K.A. Tailgate Parties but it’s that time of year again…. It’s almost time for the Superbowl and it’s also the season of the Bowl Championship Series for college football. Personally I can’t see wanting to spend a lot of time outside in this weather for a game when I can watch it at home on the tube, but there’s plenty that are more than willing to buy the pro or college football tickets, brave the weather and get the tailgate party going in the stadium parking lot when they arrive on game day.

From what I’ve seen on the subject, the key to successful tailgating is making sure that there’s plenty of everything. The idea here is that it’s better to risk having leftovers than to run out of stuff while things are in full swing. For example when making sandwiches ahead of time, make up at least six or seven more than you think you’ll need because there’s always at least one “bottomless pit”.

Whether you spend time watching Food network drumming up ideas from the likes of Emeril lagasse and Bobby Flay, or going with the basic ingredients such as everybody’s favorite types of sandwiches, loading up on different kinds of chips and drinks, potato and macaroni salads.

Then of course there’s the drinks. As much as it can be a tradition to have alcohol at something like this, it’s better to avoid that. The last thing anyone needs is for game day to end up with a DUI or worse yet, dead or injured in a wreck because somebody just had to have one more in the heat of the partying.

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On a recent shopping trip my wife an I had occasion to stop at a Hardees in West Plains, Missouri. We had the bacon double cheeseburgers and I had a large coke.

I’ve got to say that they’ve got a winner in this thing for certain. It is without doubt one of the best, most actually bacon flavored, burgers of that variety that I think I’ve ever had. For one thing the bacon was just about as perfect as you could want it. I’ve had a good number of burgers with bacon on them in my days and most of the time it’s either limp, soggy and half cooked or it’s so tough you’d think you were eating glass fiber cable instead of bacon. In addition to that, the bacon taste was strong (though it did NOT overpower the burger!) and I could just about swear that they used smoked bacon… which made it an extra special treat for the taste.

Suffice it to say that we’ll be doing that again some time. Between the Angus beef and now the bacon that they’re using…. they’ve got a great thing going on there.

Oh, by the way, the drink. I ordered a large coke and got something that looked to me like it had to be a 36oz or larger size. Normally I expect 16 to 20 ounces when ordering a large drink, so they hit that one out of the park as well.

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I’m craving Double Cheeseburgers and that means I’m annoyed with McDonald’s. More specifically I’m talking about the local franchise in this part of rural Arkansas. You see it seems like it’s been almost forever that their double cheeseburger has been a staple item on their famous Dollar Menu and as such they’ve been a favorite of mine for a long time.

That is, until about a bit over a year ago I think it was that the local franchise made a change in the Dollar menu. The removed the double cheeseburger and replaced it with the “Big n Tasty”. As a result the double cheeseburger nicely doubled in price.

The “Big n Tasty” isn’t a bad burger as far as it goes, but it’s not the double cheeseburger that I’m craving and would much rather have. The “Big n Tasty” features tomato, a leaf or three of lettuce, pickles, onions (large ring shaped pieces instead of the fine diced onions used on the other, preferred sandwich) and a hefty layer of mayo.

I’m not anti-mayo, but I don’t like having that much of it on one burger. My wife doesn’t care for the onions because they’re so big and because there is so many of them. When we end up with these things instead of the double cheeseburgers I end up fishing the onions out of the mayo on hers and scraping the mayo off of mine which makes them reasonable.

It’s bugged me enough that I’ve been tempted more than once to try to create a campaign to return the Double Cheeseburger to the Dollar menu… maybe call them and email ‘em frequently and put up a web page or blog entry encouraging others to contact them about it.

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